Saturday, June 3, 2017

Man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? (Browning)

Now that evidence points to a slight rise in overnight
temperature is contributing to a loss of sleep, and a loss of sleep is significant
contributor to obesity, it is not surprising that our individual and collective
capacity to digest information and make sense of the world is threatened.

For septaginarians, like your scribe, holding onto new
information and reflecting on its meaning and significance has already become a
challenge. However, stepping away from this keypad and the daily diet of news
for a full week, and then returning to is an exercise in minor shock therapy.
There is a drumbeat of political announcements like the U.S. president’s
withdrawal from the Paris accord on global warming and climate change, fraught
as are all of his views, with counter-intelligence, fact denial and pomposity.
Drums vibrating from St. Petersburg carry Putin’s out-of-closet denial of interference
in the U.S. election by the Russian government, but Russia patriots may have
hacked American computers. And, “NO!” the talks between Russian ambassador and
trump’s men never reached the stage of talking about removal of sanctions.

However, two very disturbing “memes” seem to be “colluding”
for pre-eminence in contemporary news
culture:

a) the increasing dominance of wannabe dominator
personalities like trump and putin and

b) the convergence of the two visual modes, the “still”
and the “movie” frame of our shared reality.

Browning)

On the first, the “personality” cult that we (all of
us) have both permitted and enhanced as a lens through which to examine complex
issues with words and concepts and perceptions that we use everyday while
speaking to family and colleagues gives us the illusion of being able to “grasp”
a thread from the coattails of complex and often confusing narratives on taxes,
treaties, accords, announcements and dire warnings. So long as we can ‘file’
various snippets under the name of the ‘speaker’ and continue to “understand”
that person for what we have constructed him/her to be, then the world is less
complex, less threatening and more easily dismissed as “just another day in the
life of the actors on stage”.

This “character” analysis also fits in with a dominant
“judgement” preference that seems to be an inheritance from most religious
mind-sets, enabling the “good-guy-bad-guy” simplistic dichotomy that keeps us
from struggling with ambiguities within the characters and inside the details
of the stories. Movie reviews, television reviews, political analysis, the
study of history through the lens of biography….all of these pursuits rely very
heavily on the “human character” microscope….and enable the gossip magazines,
the tabloids, and the courts and even the schools and universities to sustain
their initiatives funded by conservative investors who count on a persistent
and voracious appetite across many demographics. Embedded in this fascination
with human personality is the “super” human archetype, (another carry-over from
a unique perception of a deity, transferred to human nature), the most recent
embodiment being “wonder-woman”.

We so deeply and profoundly desire ‘order’ and safety
in our turbulence that we know we do not comprehend, that we defer to those
models with which we have some familiarity and comfort, like personality and
character. And while this lens can be both instructive and empowering by giving
us new insights with which we can identify and emulate, the breadth of our
range of “acceptable” characters and characteristics remains narrow and thereby
restricts our growth potential. The dramatist’s “protagonist” vs “antagonist”
conflict also undergirds this “world view” and replicates the narrative in
thousands or millions of renowned plays from all human cultures.

Simultaneously, while the “character” lens is always
open and receiving images, another lens type is also engaged: the “still”
versus the “moving” lens. Time, whether frozen or thawed (flowing) persists in
inserting a significant dimension into our perceptions. Most of us have been
raised on the family album, that plastic-encasement of our lives from early childhood
to now. Each still image evokes a memory, recalls a style, and, if we take the
time, perhaps even a deep emotion. The “stillness” of the image also provides a
moment frozen in time as a reference point from which comparisons,
celebrations, tears and even simple satisfaction can erupt.

And while those reflections may have an energy, the
moment of the image gives some “fixedness” a kind of visual ‘foundation block’
on which our existence has built. Amid all the ‘to-do’ lists, and the current
obligations and the contemporary confusions, there is this “still moment”
available for our ‘stability’ no matter how temporary and transitory.

Collected together, depending on the velocity of the collection, stills make movies. And every
still from today’s news will merge with tomorrow’s stills, in an endless loop
that informs, confuses, enhances or confounds our perception and our
comprehension of the meaning of events, and our relationship to them.
Novelists, playwrights, poets all depend on the delicate balance of character and
plot (along with setting) to portray their stories. And plot comprises a story-board
of moments that contain what Eliot called the objective correlative, the hanger
on which the writer drapes the story. How we hang on to the still moment, how
we integrate those moments into a full narrative (if we actually do that
integration, as opposed to simply repeating a still over and over) depends on
our willingness and capacity and openness to any nuances that might actually
emerge from those same stills that were previously missed.

The old adage that compares “ten years of experience
versus one year of experience repeated ten times” expresses the notion here.
Can putin or trump, for example, ever emerge from the ‘fossil’ of the still
image we have of each? For most, that is unlikely. Can NATO, UNICEF, UNESCO and
WHO be transformed in our perception and our cognition, as we all struggle both
to learn their basics and to develop some appropriate comprehension of these
organizations and their relevance in our lives? Depending on where we live, how
those around us impact our lives, and depending on how we seek to ‘fit’ into
the environment near us, the answers will vary with each individual.

Yet, while psychology posits the view that reality is
dependent on perception, and individual perception is unique, nevertheless, humans
have attempted to contribute to and assimilate and integrate a body of “general
knowledge” formerly termed “facts” about which we did not fundamentally argue. Our
interpretations of those “facts” was, naturally, not only permitted but even
encouraged, as we promoted the shared concept of ‘critical thought’ as a ‘public
good’.

However, the more time and ink we dedicate (either as
consumers or as writers/producers) to the “propaganda” of the dominators, the
deeper the fog into which we delve, without any GPS to enable our escape.
Nuanced analysis, echoed repeatedly from hour to hour over a 24-365 cycle,
nevertheless, tends to dull the senses, unless and until some loud explosion startles
us from our somnambulance. And regrettably, both trump and putin have ‘caught
on’ to the current demand for ‘extreme explosions’ as their way of “commanding”
the world stage. They both select times and subjects on which they maintain
absolute silence; they both choose other times and subjects on which they
explode. And our dependable appetite for entertainment (as opposed to boring
explanatory information) feeds their insatiable need for the spotlight.

This shared and symbiotic narcissism (our’s for
exaggerated entertainment and their’s for our adulation) regrettably feeds a devolving,
downward descent to the lowest common denominator, both of blatant political
manipulation and of rapidly descending expectations of better decisions and
aspirations for our shared lives on the planet.

This week the vast majority of people, companies and nations
have expressed a counter-trump view to the Paris accord. Furthermore, we all hold
an unshakeable hope that our children and grandchildren will be able to breathe
clean air, to drink clean water and to plant seeds for food in uncontaminated
soil.

Nevertheless, we are all sitting on ‘tenter hooks’
anxiously wondering if as a species we both can and will seize the opportunity
to develop and manifest attitudes including trust in our capacity and our
courage to leave a legacy of which both our grandkids and we ourselves can and
will be proud. Our trust in public institutions, and especially in the leaders who
currently occupy positions of leadership and responsibility, is running at a
very low ebb. And while the frozen headlines of this week are encouraging, the
longer moving picture of our collaboration, co-operation and mutual trust of
both our allies and our “competitors” most of whom trump considers our enemies,
is much less convincing and corroborative of our determined pursuit of a vision
of healthy human shared existence.

The current shared “existential crisis” seems to have
been missed by some, and their immediate political ideological agenda has taken
prominence in their attitudes and actions. This epic narrative will only unfold
long after our lives have ended, and the leaders may well be using that larger
truth to take advantage of the moment.